Elden Ring Madness Incantation Build Guide - Frenzied Acolyte

Apr. 11, 2024

Elden Ring Madness Incantation Build Guide – Frenzied Acolyte

In this Elden Ring Madness Incantation Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Frenzied Acolyte build. This is a level 100 build that focuses on purely casting incantations to deal incredible damage. People have been asking me for two things, a pure incantation casting build and a madness build. In this build, we’ll be combining both of those things because they work very well together.

An Arcane/Faith Build that focuses on casting incantations from range, only meleeing when absolutely necessary.

We have over 110Elden Ring Buildsnow, for all classes and playstyles. This Build is recommended for Level 100.

Madnessis a new status effect that’s never before seen in any FromSoftware title. Essentially, it only works on human enemies, so this is going to be for the ones the same size as you that look humanoid. It’s effective inPvPsituations, too. When you gain the madness status effect, you basically lose 100 + 15% of your max HP, while also losing 30 + 10% of your max FP. You’re going to be staggered for a few seconds while this animation happens, which’ll also happen to enemies or other players. This is an extremely powerful effect, and what makes it different from other status effects besides the fact that it only builds up on humans, is the fact that a lot of madness abilities or spells also build up your madness gauge. You have to be careful how much you use these madness spells, or you will also gain the same status effect. One way to mitigate madness build-up is to increase yourFocus. This is attached to yourMindattribute, but it’s also on armor. When you’re making a build revolving around madness, if you intend to use that, you want to make sure you have high focus so that you can cast more of these spells and abilities before you go mad.

I also want to note that even though this build uses two spells that build up madness on enemies, it isn’t focused around madness. We’re using those spells for the damage rather than the madness effect, and this is predominantly a PvE build. You could also use it in PvE because madness is effective in that part of the game.

So let’s talk about the two spells that we use in this build that inflict madness,Flame of FrenzyandFrenzied Burst.

The Flame of Frenzyis sort of a mid-ranged cone AoE that deals incredible fire damage. It has a very high stagger potential if you do one charged cast of this spell, then one regular cast. You can stagger the trolls in this game, which is pretty incredible. Usually, it’s two charged R2s, which you don’t have to do with this spell. You can do it at range, so this is very good at staggering bosses, as well as very good at AoE situations. You can hold R1 to charge it up to increase the range that it casts, but you don’t have to.

Frenzied Burstis a single-target spell that deals less damage than Flame of Frenzy. However, it has incredible range and you can hold down R1 to increase the damage it deals. This is really good for picking off targets at long range, although it has a high casting cost at 24 FP, so you won’t be using it all the time. If you really need to take something out without engaging it, this is the spell for that. It allows us to pick off enemies at very long distances in one shot, maybe two if they’re tough enemies.

These spells give us incredible versatility when combined with our other mid-range single target spells that are a lot cheaper. If you want to play a pure incantation caster, these two spells should be in your repertoire.

Out of all the builds I’ve made, this build has the most specific equipment. You’re going to need a lot of very specific pieces to get the most out of this build. The seal that I use for this build is theDragon Communion Seal, although I use a few seals for this build. This will be your primary seal that’s going to be used for casting because it has amazing scaling when you pumpArcaneup. It also scales offFaithas well, though to a lesser extent. You’re going to need some Faith to meet the requirements for the spells you’re using, so those points aren’t wasted. It will also apply to your incantation scaling, giving you very high damage. Beyond the scaling, the bonus toDragon Incantationsis not beneficial to this build because we don’t use those, although you can add them to this build if you want.

For our off-hand, we’re going to be using different ones depending on the situation. We’ll be usingFrenzied Flame Seal,Gravel Stone Seal, and theGodslayer’s Seal. We’re going to cycle these depending on the spells that we’re going to be casting in order to get the boost to those types of spell. You don’t have to cast the spells with those seals in order to gain the bonus, they simply need to be in your off-hand.

If you don’t want to cycle between these three seals, you can use theJellyfish Shieldto boost all types of spell by 20%. You can buff yourself every 30 seconds to get that damage, but it’ll add a lot of equip load. Using this shield will also make it harder to useBloodhound’s Step, which we use on our weapon for this build, so there are some downsides to doing that.

For my weapon, I chose theGlaivewith occult scaling in order to gain damage from all the Arcane we have put in on our character. I put Bloodhound’s Step on it in order to give you spacing. You want to get out of harm’s way when enemies are aggressive, so you can get to a safe spot and swap back to your Dragon Communion Seal to use spells. The weapon you choose here isn’t specifically important for this build.

When it comes to armor, I useCommoner’s Garbbecause it gives off Focus, which is what we want for this build. Having high Focus is how you resist madness build-up, so when you’re using Flame of Frenzy, you won’t make yourself mad.

The other two pieces I use for this build areNoble’s GlovesandNoble’s Trousers. Again, these are used for their high Focus values which will help us against madness build-up. You can use other armor pieces here that have good Focus and protection, but take note that if you have less focus, you have to be more careful. I find that with this set-up, I don’t really have to worry about madness at all. If you want to have more protection, you might have to sacrifice a little bit of Focus.

When it comes to talismans, I useGodfrey Icon,Faithful’s Canvas Talisman,Ritual Sword Talisman, andFire Scorpion Charm Talisman. You can sub out Fire Scorpion Charm forLightning Scorpion Charmif you’re going in to a boss fight where you know you’re going to be chucking Lightning Spear a lot, or if enemies are resistant to fire.

Godfrey Iconis used to increase the damage of spells that we charge. Flame of Frenzy, Frenzied Burst, andLightning Spearare all chargeable. All of these spells will gain an increase to damage when using the charged version of them, so this is a good talisman to have.

Faithful’s Canvas Talismanis there to increase the potency of your incantations by a little bit. It’s not a lot, so we’ll be swapping this out later for a better version of it. However, in order to get the most out of the possible damage we can do, this’ll be okay to use.

We haveRitual Sword Talismanfor the same reason. This boosts your overall damage by 10% when you’re at full health. You’re not going to be hit very much with this build because you’ll be sliding all over the place with Bloodhound’s Step in order to stay out of harm’s way, so you’ll almost always be at full health.

Fire Scorpion Charmis obviously there to boost your fire damage. Most of the spells you do deal fire damage, with the exception of Lightning Spear. I mentioned that you might need to change between Fire Scorpion Charm andLightning Scorpion Charmdepending on the situation.

Generally, how this build plays is that you’re just going to make your way around the landscape attacking enemies with your spells at range, deducing which ones are doing the best damage. If you can’t one-shot enemies with your spells, either charged or uncharged, you’re going to use Golden Vow to increase your damage further to make it so that you can one-shot the enemies. If you don’t need the Golden Vow buff, you don’t have to waste FP. Otherwise, use this to make sure you can one-shot them.

If you’re in areas where you need that,Flame, Grant Me Strengthis your extra buff to increase your fire damage for your spells. You’re not going to use this if you’re using Lightning Spear, but it’s there for boss fights or tough enemies when you’re going to need all the buff you can get to kill them quickly. Don’t forget to swap your seals around on your off-hand in order to get the specific spell buff. For example, if you castBlack Flame, you’re going to want to use the Godslayer’s Seal.

When it comes to stats for this build, I have: 35Vigor, 29Mind, 10Endurance, 18Strength, 15Dexterity, 9Intelligence, 27Faith, and 45Arcane. Keep in mind that both Faith and Arcane are boosted by equipment pieces, so that will actually be a bit less than what is shown here.

35 Vigor is there to make sure that you don’t die in one hit, since you have very light armor. With this build, you want to make sure that you can at least survive to take a potion. You could go a little bit lower than this if you’re comfortable, although this will make you more of a glass cannon. If not, you should leave it at that.

29 Mind is there to not only increase your Focus to resist madness, but also give you more FP to play around with spells. As a spellcaster, you need FP. As you approach 150 with this build, you’re probably going to increase this even higher because these spells cost a lot of FP and you want to be able to fling them at will.

10 Endurance is there because we don’t really need equip load at all for this build, and we need the points elsewhere.

18 Strength and 15 Dexterity are only there to meet the requirements for the Glaives. These stats will vary depending on what weapon you’re using, so if you’re using something that requires 10 strength, you’ll have a lot more freed up here that you’ll probably want to put in Faith and Mind in order to increase your damage more and to give yourself more FP to play with.

27 Faith is needed not only to meet the requirements for some spells, but the Godslayer’s Seal requires 27 Faith. If you want to boost Black Flame by using that seal, even if it’s not upgraded in your off-hand, you want to have 27 Faith at the minimum. You’re going to need 25 for Golden Vow anyway, so a couple extra points to get that is good. It also boosts your damage as well.

When it comes to Arcane, this is your primary stat for damage. We stop at 45 here because there is sort of a steep drop-off in terms of damage at this point. You’re going to want to increase Faith in order to increase your damage, and when it reaches 45 or 50, you want to start bringing these up together to further increase your damage.

If you’re using theFlask of Wondrous Physickfor a boss fight, or even tough enemies, you’re going to want to adjust either lightning or fire damage, depending on what the enemy is weak to. So if they’re weak to lightning, you’re going to want to use Lightning Spear. You’re going to want to use theLightning-Shrouding Cracked Tearfor it.

If it’s fire, you’re going to want to put theFlame-Shrouding Cracked Tear, orStonebarb Cracked Tearto increase your stagger damage, as Flame of Frenzy does incredible stagger damage. This’ll make sure that your enemy will be staggered even easier, giving you knockdowns on bosses to help you unload Flame of Frenzy towards them.

That’s it for our Frenzied Acolyte Build Guide! As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming for Elden Ring andShadow of the Erdtreeso stay tuned for those. If you need help finding items, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check theElden Ring Map. Happy building!

Castielle

Senior Editor at Fextralife. I enjoy gaming, playing and watching sports, cooking yummy food, watching a good movie and hanging out with Fex.